


Damn These Vampires

by CatLovePower



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blood, Broken Bones, Gen, Horror, Hurt Dean, Hurt Sam, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8433025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatLovePower/pseuds/CatLovePower
Summary: Impossible scars, weird memories, and a strange creature preying on guilt in a motel room.Halloween ficlet with angst and whump for the Winchester brothers.





	

It was late October and Dean was high on sugar most of the time. It was their busiest period of the year, go figure. Sam was so tired he could have fallen asleep right now, right there, even though he was awkwardly lying on a very uncomfortable bed in a moldy motel somewhere in Wisconsin. Or was it Iowa?

He groaned, opened a bleary eye and watched his brother kick off his boots, sitting on the other bed. Their last hunt involved an angry spirit, in a spooky house next to a lake. Thankfully, no one had been thrown into it, but they had to salt and burn at least a dozen unmarked graves next to the house before finding the right one. They were covered in mud and ash.

“I’m going to hit the shower,” Dean said. “You okay, Sammy?” he asked, a bit concerned.

Sam waved and grunted, burying his face in the rough comforter. Dean closed the door of the small bathroom and the noise of the water drowned everything else for a while.

He came out still wet, half naked, with an off white towel tied around his waist. He plopped on Sam’s bed, suddenly up close and personal, running his fingers through his brother’s hair.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Sam bolted up and tried to push the invading hand.

“You took quite a hit earlier,” Dean said, with a grim look. “You’ve got a big lump.”

“You’re the big lump.”

“That was lame, even for you. Are you sure you’re not concussed?”

Sam wasn’t quite sure, but there wasn’t a lot they could do about it anyway. Pissed off ghosts that could move objects weren’t his favorite monsters. Not when they threw paperweights and books at his head.

“I’m good. Stop poking me,” he said. Dean kept looking at him, with that concerned frown he had when he got all big brotherly.

Sam sat a bit straighter on the bed and said, “Hey, what’s that?” pointing at Dean’s forearm.

Dean looked at the inside of his arm, where a long white scar slithered among freckles. He seemed surprised by the question.

“The scar? I had it for years.”

“I don’t remember,” Sam said, confused.

“You were very young when it happened,” Dean said, studying his brother’s face intently. “Let me get dressed, and I’ll tell you about it.”

Why couldn’t he remember? Sam thought. It was weird, considering they patched each other on a regular basis and he was responsible for the stitches of quite a few of Dean’s scars. This one seemed new, yet old.

Dean came back with pants on, buttoning his shirt, his hair still slightly damp.

“I think you were four or five,” he started. “It was a night, not unlike this one, wind howling outside. We stopped at a motel in the middle of nowhere, on the road with dad…”

“Are you telling a horror story now?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“That’s what our lives are, aren’t they?”

Dean got a point, so Sam let him finish his scary story. He was just glad he hadn’t decided to turn off the lights and use a flashlight for special effects.

“So you where what, eight or nine?” Sam asked, concerned. That was quite a big scar for such a small boy.

“Something like that. It was around the time dad had the talk.” In Winchester speak, it meant telling them about monsters and things that go bump in the night, not condoms and frisky times. That had come later, and had been even more awkward for everyone.

“I think it was in Kentucky, not sure,” Dean continued. “I snuck out one night, followed dad. I hid in the backseat of the car while he drove to the forest with another hunter. It was scary and exciting, but not as much as seeing a Wendigo face to face for the first time.”

“What did you do?” Sam asked after a sharp intake of breath.

“I yelled. I ran. Fell and broke my arm.”

“Ouch,” Sam winced in sympathy.

“The bone went through the skin, it was awful,” Dean continued, looking  at his arm and the white scar.

“How come I don’t remember any of that? Didn’t you have a cast?”

“You don’t remember my first manly compound fracture?” Dean pretended to be offended.

“Not at all…” Sam tried to smile, but that was definitely weird. Was he such a brat that he wasn’t even aware his brother got hurt?

“Okay, how about this one…” Dean stood up and started unbuttoning his jeans.

“Wow, what are you doing now?” Sam said, raising his hands. “You should lay off sugar for a bit, you’re acting all weird and— Oh.” Sam stopped talking as soon as he saw his brother’s thigh. It looked as if a shark had taken a bite off the leg, leaving the muscles a bit hollow and weirdly shaped.

“Just what in hell is that?” Sam exclaimed, fighting back the urge to take a closer look. It was gross and fascinating and it looked like it hurt a lot. Maybe still did.

“You can’t remember this one, it happened when you were at Stanford.”

Did Sam detect a hint of accusation in Dean’s voice? He didn’t remember the hunt, or the injury, but he didn’t even recall the scar. And that was impossible. He was becoming crazy, berating himself for not knowing his brother’s naked body by heart…

“I was hunting with dad, and I got captured.” There was no emotion in his voice now.

“Captured by what?” Sam asked, not because he wanted to know more, but because Dean had stopped talking and his eyes were vacant, as if he wasn’t in their crappy motel room anymore.

“Chupacabra,” Dean said with a shudder. He made a fist with his hand and sat down, his face grim. “It was in New Mexico, and I swore I’d never go there again. Those crazy bastards had captured several Chupacabras and trained them to fight in underground rings. Abducted local hobos, forced them to fight for their life, then dumped the bodies in the street.”

“You… fought a Chupacabra in an illegal fight ring?” Sam tried to clarify what seemed like bullshit, if it weren’t for that scar.

“It was the plan, but I escaped. They set the thing on me in the sewer tunnels.”

“And it caught up with you?” It couldn’t be, Dean was just pulling his leg for Halloween. Sam tried to find rational explanations but he came up with nothing.

“A bloodbath. But dad found me.”

“That’s messed up,” Sam said in a whisper. “You should have called.”

“And told you what? Dude, you can’t take your finals because a mythical beast chewed on my leg? Could you come and sit with me in the hospital for a while?”

“You shouldn’t have to suffer alone. Why didn’t you ever speak about it?”

“Why do you care, Sammy?”

That hurt. But thoughts were whirling in his mind; maybe he wasn’t good at being a brother. Maybe he was a liability, selfish and unable to see what was in front of him.

Dean turned on the bed, facing the wall. The wallpaper was peeling and there was black mold near the ceiling.

“Dean, talk to me,” Sam whined, feeling useless and out of his depth. His brother remained stubbornly turned around, ignoring him, punishing him. So Sam grabbed his shoulder and shook him. Dean looked at him, and one of his eyes was bleeding.

“Dean, are you hurt?” It was a silly question, really, because his brother was crying tears of blood in front of him.

“You did that,” Dean said, his voice low and accusatory. “You chose the motel. You didn’t check the lore.”

And that was true, that was so true. He didn’t check anything and now Dean’s eye… Sam felt his grip on reality slowly dissolve, as more and more scars began to mar his brother’s face. Scars that shouldn’t be there, but suddenly existed, wounds that were reopening his front of his eyes.

He gripped Dean’s shoulder even tighter, and watched with horror as his blood began to soak up his shirt, just below his fingers. He was hurting him, he was responsible, he…

*

Dean swore that if Sam didn’t stop trashing in his bed, he was going to get up and kick his ass. The bed was springy, the comforter way too scratchy, the shower head kept dripping and he was pretty sure he heard people shagging in nearby room earlier. He couldn’t sleep, and now Sam was making little noises and turning over and over as if he was fighting an invisible assailant.

Dean’s eyes shot open in the dark and he turned on his side, a bad feeling nagging him all of a sudden. Sam was tangled in sheets, covered in sweat, an expression of horror on his face. Whatever nightmare he was having, it was a bad one.

Dean got up, intending to wake Sam up. The room was cold, colder than it should be; he could see his breath, little white clouds in front of his face. He reached under his pillow, gripping his gun, unsure of what was happening, but certain something bad was going down.

Sam was still trashing around, his arms trapped in the sheets. Dean approached slowly, but he didn’t really know what to do. He was good at killing things, but he needed to see them first. He turned his head, trying to find a light switch. And that’s when he saw it, out of the corner of his eye, draped over the bed, a white form moving like a ghost from a children’s book.

The thing was feeding off Sammy, he was sure of it. It rang a bell, but he couldn’t remember what it was exactly. He suddenly wished he still had dad’s journal; flipping through the pages covered in scribbles helped him focus. He moved quietly, gripping his useless gun for reassurance. When he got close enough to the door, he bolted from the room.

He ran to the car, opening the trunk in the dark, his gun in the waistband of his sweatpants. It was cold outside, in the middle of the night, but not as cold as it was in their motel room. Let’s see… Cold ethereal forms sucking energy off people during the night… Sucubi weren’t cold. Ghost didn’t feed off people. His hand closed on a bundle of sage, which was always the go-to plant when you were in need of things to burn.

And then it clicked. Psychic vampires. Burn sage and sweet-grass to banish them into a mirror, before breaking it. Page 142 of dad’s journal, a hunt with Bobby in Montana.

He ran back inside, just in time to see that Sam wasn’t moving anymore; it was bad, he had to be quick. Dean couldn’t see the vampire, but he knew what to expect. There was a shift in the room, the air became warmer, then colder, and suddenly he reeled back, as if he had been slapped. The invisible creature struck again, harder this time, and Dean found himself thrown against the moldy wall. He crumpled into a heap on the smelly carpeting, trying to get his bearings.

Luckily, he hadn’t released his grip on the sage; the bathroom mirror would have to do. He got to his feet and ran across the room, trying really hard not to think about the fact that Sam wasn’t breathing anymore. He fumbled with his lighter, his hands clammy.

Cold air followed him, and he caught a fleeting sight of the vampire in his back. It felt as if an icy hand had grabbed his neck, before smashing his head against the sink. He must have busted his nose, because there was blood everywhere on the bathroom tiles. He tried not to slip, gripping the edge of the sink, then flicked his lighter, igniting the little bundles of plants. The creature hissed and the temperature dropped once more. Dean braced himself but the blow never came.

He stood up in front of the bathroom mirror; the lights were flickering, probably a faulty wire, or maybe the vampire was trying to communicate. It was trapped in the glass, visible for the first time; dark hollow eyes, sunken cheeks and long, bony fingers tapping on the other side of the mirror.

Dean shuddered, then taunted, “You’re ugly, you know that?”

The fingers formed a fist, and punched the mirror, hard. The wall shook, and the image rippled. Not good, not good at all. Dean retrieved his gun and hit the mirror with the butt of the gun. It didn’t break, didn’t even crack. But the cold fingers passed from the other side and brushed his hand.

“That’s it!” Dean growled. He took a step back and shot the mirror.

The image shattered and shards flew everywhere. Someone next door banged on the wall. In the room, Sam took a breath and coughed, and it was the best sound Dean had ever heard.

“Sammy?” he sat on his heels next to the bed, not daring to move him, touch him, do anything.

“Dean?” Sam sat straight on the bed, looking frightened and disheveled. “What happened to your face?” he asked, and Dean raised a hand to his bleeding nose, which wasn’t crooked, thankfully.

“Show me your arm,” Sam added, out of the blue. Dean complied without saying anything, raising the arm that wasn’t holding the gun. Sam took it and placed it on his lap, racing fingers along the smooth skin, as if he was looking for something. He looked relieved, breathing a little easier.

“You mind telling me what that was about?” Dean tried to sound irritated, but really, if Sam wanted to hold him, it was okay with him for tonight.

“You’re not hurt,” Sam said with a sigh, and that was no longer a question. Dean sagged at the foot of the bed, letting Sam pat him on the head.

**Author's Note:**

> Halloween gift on tumblr. It’s been a long time since I wrote any Supernatural, I hope it doesn’t come across as too awkward.


End file.
